


Some Walls

by punkrockgaia



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, Bullying, Implied Animal Torture, Lost Time, M/M, Mental Illness, Parental Disappearance, Spoilers for "Cassette"
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-30 15:59:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1020604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkrockgaia/pseuds/punkrockgaia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Some walls aren't meant to be destroyed, or even peeked over."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Walls

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by the events of the "Cassette" episode, and is one of the angstiest things I've ever written in my life.

Carlos is driving at top speed through the streets of Night Vale. He's normally much more cautious, but this is important. He's on a rescue mission.

******************

It had all started a few weeks earlier, on a Saturday. They had been walking hand-in-hand down the sidewalks of Old Town, chatting comfortably after a leisurely lunch. For some Cecil reason, Cecil had decided to stare at the sun for a moment, then sneezed.

"Augh! Why does that always happen?" Cecil had cried, sniffling. "Am I allergic to the sun?"

Carlos had chuckled. He loved playing Mr. Wizard for his science-challenged boyfriend. "It's just an autonomic response. They don't really know why it happens, but they think that maybe the bright light causes your pupils to constrict really fast, and that stimulates one of the nerves in your brain, and that somehow irritates another nerve that causes you to sneeze."

"Oh, that's so interesting, my Brilliant Carlos! So it's like the memory thing, right?"

"Memory thing? I'm not sure I follow."

"You know, when you try to remember something from your childhood, and then the headache and the throwing up and the lost time all that?"

"No, no, I'm not sure I do know. That happens to you?"

"It happens to everyone, Carlos. _Everyone,_ " Cecil intoned in his best radio voice, and changed the subject to a particularly fascinating squirrel across the street that had captured his interest. 

Carlos felt too full and happy to argue the point at that moment, so they walked on. But it ate at him. It was a part of his personality. Questions couldn't find their way out of his brain once they got in there. What the hell was Cecil even talking about? Was he joking? Was he exaggerating? Speaking metaphorically? Misinterpreting some other phenomenon? If he was speaking accurately, was he all right? What could be the cause of such weird symptoms? And how could he have a headache, anyway, what with the "no pain receptors" thing? The thoughts pushed at him, a little bit at first, then almost non-stop, intruding on his work and his sleep. He brought it up again over morning coffee a few days later.

"Hey, Cecil?"

Cecil looked up from his phone, where he was absorbed in a vicious game of Words With Friends that he was playing with Big Rico. "Yes, Perfect, Perfect Carlos?"

Carlos sighed internally. Try as he might, he couldn't break Cecil of his habit of heaping effusive praise on him almost every time he said his name. During their first fight, he'd even sputtered "You're a grade-A jerk, Perfect Wonderful Beautiful Carlos!" But that was an issue for a different day.

"I've been thinking about what you said."

Cecil beamed at him. "You mean my idea that the Sheriff's Secret Police should wear invisible capes for Clock Tower Awareness month?"

Carlos shook his head. "Nooo... I still think that everyone in town is about as aware of the Clock Tower as they're gonna get. Also, invisible capes? Why wouldn't they just **not wear** their capes?"

Cecil grunted, slightly exasperated. "That would be missing the point, then, wouldn't it?" He turned his attention back to his phone.

"Well, whatever. I don't know. Maybe you're right." Carlos could see the hint of a smile quirk at the ends of his kissable mouth. "But anyway, what I meant was what you were saying about getting sick when you tried to remember your childhood."

"Oh, yes, memory migraines. Very common. Is 'quargle' a word?"

"I... don't know. I'm not the word guy, remember? Common, though? I mean, how common are we talking, here?"

"No idea. I just assume. I mean, I'm pretty average..."

Carlos couldn't help but laugh. "You're a lot of things, my dear, but _average_ isn't one of them." He swelled a bit with pride at the pleased flush that stole across his love's cheeks. "So you don't really know?"

"Dr. Oddment said it's nothing to worry about."

"No offense, Cecil, but Dr. Oddment also accidentally decapitated our mail carrier when he was trying to take his tonsils out."

"And Arnie's never looked in better health."

Carlos opened his mouth, but the realized that he actually couldn't argue that point. Arnie had not been an attractive man. "Well, okay, but tell me more about these migraines."

"What is there to tell? I get a blinding headache, vomit, and then I wake up on the floor several hours later. Nothing to be concerned about, like I said. Though it is a little weird that the headache actually hurts, I guess."

Carlos grimaced. "That doesn't sound like nothing. This has me worried. And, frankly, a little curious. Would you mind if I ran a few tests?"

Cecil sighed and set his phone down. "Not for anyone but you, Carlos. Okay. What do you want me to do?"

Carlos hopped to his feet, then took the coffee mug from Cecil and set it on the lab table. "You're too good to me. Okay, come on over here." He led Cecil over to the other side of the lab, where he'd already powered up the EEG machine. Carlos gestured toward a chair, and Cecil dutifully sat down. Carlos peeled the stickers off the backs of the leads, then pressed them carefully to the skin on Cecil's temples, just alongside his golden hair. He stole a quick kiss then turned his attention to the monitor, which was showing deep delta waves. Carlos fiddled with the knobs and scratched his head. Weird.

"Ceese, are you really sleepy or something?"

Cecil blinked at him. "Why, Sweet Carlos, no! I feel very well-rested this morning, thank you so much for asking!" He patted Carlos on the sleeve of his lab coat.

Carlos shrugged. Either his equipment was malfunctioning, or Cecil walked through life in a kind of waking sleep. Both seemed equally likely. Anyway, he had his baseline. He printed out a copy of the tracing, then turned back to his boyfriend.

"Okay, Cecil, I want you to remember something from when you were a kid."

"Like what?"

"Anything. Something big, something small, I don't care. You don't even have to tell me what it is, if you don't want. I just want to see if something unusual is going on."

"Okay." Cecil closed his eyes, concentrating. The EEG monitor suddenly erupted into violent spikes, then flatlined. Carlos glanced over at Cecil, sure that the adhesive on the electrode patches had simply dried up in the desert heat and the patches had fallen off.

They hadn't, though. At least, he didn't think they had. He couldn't really see them, as Cecil had grabbed the sides of his head in his long-fingered hands and was sitting in the fetal position, rocking slightly.

"Ceese, are you --"

Carlos' question was interrupted by Cecil standing abruptly, knocking over the chair, and bolting from the room, dislodging the EEG cables from the machine as he did so. Carlos followed after him, his experiment forgotten in the face of overwhelming unease.

"Cecil, Cecil, are you okay?" He followed the sounds of violent retching toward the small bathroom, where he found Cecil with his head in the toilet bowl.

"Oh, Babe, I'm so sorry, I didn't know it would happen so fast." Cecil didn't answer him, as he seemed to be losing breakfast, the previous night's dinner, and possibly things he'd eaten a decade ago. He clutched at the porcelain and heaved for another ten minutes, then slumped onto the tile, exhausted. Carlos knelt beside him and stroked his face.

"Are you okay, Cecil? I'm so sorry."

Cecil groaned and tried to talk, then his violet eyes rolled back into his head, and his arms and legs thrashed around as though he'd touched a live wire. Carlos jumped back, horrified.

Every first aid class he'd ever taken ran through his head. _Okay, okay, he's having some sort of a seizure. Don't panic. Shit. Shit. Okay, don't stick anything in his mouth, just make sure he doesn't hurt himself. Okay. Okay._ He had never felt so helpless. He knew that the best thing to do was nothing at all, but it was so hard when it was happening to someone he loved. 

The seizure probably lasted less than two minutes (not that time meant anything in Night Vale), but it felt like a lifetime as Carlos stood by and wrung his hands. It finally subsided, and the chaotic thrashing devolved into the occasional twitch. Carlos knelt again on the floor and turned Cecil onto his side. He felt for a pulse, and was relieved to find it steady and strong, at about 120 beats per minute. (Cecil had a tendency to run a little hot.) He was breathing softly, and didn't seem to have bitten his tongue or anything like that. Other than the fact that his shirt was soaked through with sweat and he was lying on the floor of the bathroom, he might have been taking a catnap. Carlos shook his shoulder gently.

"Hey, Cecil, wake up."

Nothing.

He shook him a little harder, spoke a little louder. "Hey, hey Cecil, WAKE UP."

Nothing.

He got down right next to his ear and bellowed. Nothing. Pinched his arm, hard. Nothing. Raked his knuckles up and down on his sternum, hard enough to leave bright red marks. Still nothing.

Shit. Shit shit shit shit. This was not good. Even if he didn't feel pain, the stimulus should have at least been enough to wake him. He looked back and forth between Cecil's prostrate form and the door, then decided he had to leave him alone long enough to get help.

He dashed through the lab and skidded as he grabbed his cell phone then ran back to the bathroom, crazily hoping that he'd get back and Cecil would be sitting up, complaining about the bruises from the pinch and the sternal rub.

Cecil was just as he'd left him. Carlos was shaking so hard he could barely make his fingers dial 911. 

The phone rang. And rang. And rang. Finally, when he was about to hang up, someone picked up on the other end.

"Yeah, hey, send an ambulance, okay? My boyfriend had some kind of a seizure or something, and I can't get him up. Please hurry." He fought with himself to remain calm. There'd be time to fall apart in a heap when the paramedics arrived.

There was silence on the line, and then a high-decibel shriek that caused him to drop his phone and made his ear feel like it was stuffed with cotton. He scrambled for it, desperately, then hit the "end call" button. 

There was a knock on the door. Oh, thank god. He didn't quite understand how the ambulance service worked, but he'd take being deaf in one ear for the rest of his life as long as there was just someone there to _help._

He ran to the door like he was on fire, and flung it open. "Oh, thank god you're here. Ohmygod."

He blinked. Instead of a squadron of tersely professional EMTs with a stretcher and oxygen mask, he was greeted with the sight of Old Woman Josie, dressed in a floral-print t-shirt and matching stretch pants, looking like everyone's grandma. (Well, not Carlos' _abuela,_ who hung out with the Young Lords and listened to War before doing a 180 and joining a Pentecostal church, but a grandma out of central casting.) She was holding a bowling bag.

"Is your damn boyfriend here? I've been hauling this bag all over town looking for him. He left it in my car last week."

"Josie!" He was so glad to have someone, anyone, there to share the burden of his fear that he almost kissed her. "Oh, thank god you're here. There's something wrong with Cecil."

Her expression changed instantly from fond perturbation to worry. "Cecil? What's wrong with him?"

"He's... I don't know. He had a seizure or something, and I can't wake him up."

She snorted and rolled her eyes. "That idiot. You'd think he'd learn. What was he trying to remember?"

Carlos stared at her. "You know about this?"

"Yeah, yeah, he's been that way for years. Where is he now?"

"He's in the... in the bathroom."

"Well, let's not just leave him there." She turned back to her compact car and gave a loud whistle. "Erika! come here! Erika, you call Erika and say we won't be home for a while." A ten-foot tall winged androgynous figure wearing overalls got out of the backseat and gracefully loped toward the lab. Carlos led the two visitors to the bathroom, where Cecil lay just as immobile as before. Josie squatted next to him.

"What's this thing?" she asked, holding up the electrode cable.

"Oh, it's just... We were doing an experiment." He heard how stupid the words sounded as they left his mouth. Josie didn't say anything, just pursed her lips and shook her head, slowly. Carlos didn't figure he'd won any points in her book.

"Erika, pick him up and take him over to the couch in the big room, okay?" One of the angels nodded, then scooped Cecil up as easily as if he'd been a rag doll and carried him over to the lounge area. Josie positioned herself on the couch with a pillow on her lap. The angel carefully placed the still-unconscious Cecil on the couch, his head on her lap, then knelt next to the couch, expressionless, standing guard. She detached the electrodes from Cecil's temples and unhooked his glasses from behind his ears, then handed them to Carlos. 

"Go get a blanket. Preferably one that you use. It'll smell like you, and that'll help him find his way back."

Carlos nodded, grateful to have something to do. He came back with his light comforter and gently spread it over Cecil, tucking it around his arms and chest. He kissed his forehead, then took a seat on a stool just across from the sofa.

"God, I feel like such an asshole. I didn't think that something like this would happen. He was telling me about these... migraines that he gets, and I wanted to see if I could figure it out, but I didn't mean for... this."

Josie's frown softened a bit. "Ah, I guess it's not really your fault. He should know better. You've gotta be more careful, though. He'd fling himself off Radon Canyon if you asked him to."

Carlos nodded, sadly. "So, uh, is he gonna be okay?"

"Yeah, in a little while. This isn't the first time something like this happened."

"He said it was really common."

"Weeeellll, I don't know about common. I mean, it's not like this happens to everybody. Doesn't happen to me, for example. Just people who have had certain procedures done, and he's particularly sensitive to it, so he gets it a little more severe than a lot of folks."

Carlos' hands tightened on the edge of the lab table until his knuckles ached. "'Procedures'? What kind of 'procedures'?"

Josie gestured vaguely. "Well, I'm no doctor, so I can't explain it to you exactly, but it's like... walls. Partitions."

"Partitions in what?"

"In his brain. Keeps the bad stuff out."

"That's monstrous!"

Josie shook her head. "No, it's for his own good, trust me."

"How could that possibly be for his own good? Look at him!"

Josie thought for a moment, and when she spoke again, her voice sounded like it was coming from far away. "Cassandra, Cecil's momma, she was... Special. Beautiful, beautiful girl. Blonde hair, blue eyes, looked like a sunny day. And that wasn't all. She had... talents."

Carlos leaned forward, shocked and fascinated. He knew next to nothing about Cecil's family, and hadn't wanted to ask, sensing that it was somewhat of a touchy subject. "What kind of talents?"

"She knew things. Things that there was no way for her to know."

"Oh, like Cecil knows what's going on in town, even when he's been stuck in his booth all day."

She smiled fondly and ran her fingers through the longer, floppy hair at the top of Cecil's head. "Bunny's done pretty well for himself with what he has." Cecil shifted a bit and murmured, whether at the comforting pressure of her hands or what seemed to be a childhood nickname, Carlos didn't know. Josie continued. "But the comparison is like a birthday candle next to a forest fire. Cecil can see what's going on right now, but she saw _everything_. The future, the past, the beginning of the world and the end."

"That's... amazing."

"She was an amazing girl. But..." She looked at him, searchingly. "Have you ever made a pot? Like on a wheel?"

Carlos shook his head, confused by the digression. "No, can't say that I have."

She bit her lip, then continued. "Well, you know, when you make a pot out of clay, you have to be careful. If the clay has any imperfections in it, when the kiln gets hot, it cracks."

Carlos frowned. He thought he saw what she was getting at, though he didn't want to. "And that's what happened to his mom? She cracked?"

Josie nodded, sadly. "I guess you'd probably call it schizophrenia or something like that. I don't know. All I know is that before she was even 20 years old, her visions started to get confused. She couldn't tell the difference between what she was seeing with her eyes, what she was seeing with her mind, and the stuff that her mind was _making_ her see, you get it? I mean, she did her best for her boys --"

"Her boys?"

"Cecil and... his brother." She made a face like she'd eaten something rotten.

"Cecil has a brother? Who is he?"

"It doesn't matter. He's gone. I'm not going to waste my breath even telling you his name. He makes me want to spit, but he's not worth my saliva. Anyway, she did her best for her boys, but she had a lot of obstacles in front of her. It wasn't her fault, but there were a lot of times she just couldn't take care of them. So we all pitched in, made sure they had food, clean clothes, somewhere to stay when things got bad at home. You could say that the whole town raised them, really."

"Where was their father?"

Josie shrugged. "No idea. No idea who he is, really. Could be anyone. Could be someone from out of town. Could be two different guys. Could be no one. She was beautiful and vulnerable and didn't always make the best choices. She'd go into hiding for a while, then drive herself to the hospital, give birth, collect the kid, and then go about her business like nothing happened."

"God, that's _horrible_."

"Yeah, but not any worse than a lot of people got it. Our boy here turned out pretty okay. He stayed over my house many a night, just twittering away like he does. I didn't mind, that was before the angels moved in. They were living with Old Woman Darla at the time, and I was pretty lonely. He was good company, for a rugrat."

"What happened to them, his mother and his brother?"

"I'm getting to that. Well, sort of. When they were real little, the boys were pretty much alike, but as they got older, they started to change, develop their own personalities like kids do. Cecil stayed open, stayed protective of his momma, stayed _human_. The other one, though, he closed up like a fist. Started to hate the world. Got mean. Did terrible things. Broke everything his brother and mother cared about, like that poor dog."

"Oh." Carlos didn't think he wanted the details.

"Cecil and Cassie still loved him, though, even though he acted like the devil. It happens. He was embarrassed by his family and hated Cassie for not giving him a normal life and hated Cecil for not hating her too. I was so relieved when Cecil got his intern job. He had something outside the house and all that evil."

"Intern job?"

"At the radio station. It had been foretold, of course, but not everyone fits so well into their fate. Pretty soon it was clear that he had a real future there, since he managed not to get killed or teleported into space or anything, like the other interns did. I was proud of him and relieved, like I said, but it just made things worse at home. His brother was angrier and more violent than ever, and Cassie wasn't holding up under the strain. She started to... manifest things. I don't know whether they were from some other, dark place or just the dark place inside of her head, but, like, oozing things, things that would bite if you got too close. They were small at first, but they were getting bigger all the time. I tried to talk Cecil into moving in with me, but he wouldn't leave his mom."

Carlos shivered. "Well, so what happened?"

"Honestly, no one really knows. Cecil didn't show up for his shift at the station, which, as you can imagine, had never happened before, so Leonard, who was The Voice at the time, actually left his show to go check on him himself. The front door was open, every mirror in the house was broken, there was blood and... stuff all over the floor, and Cecil was alone in the middle of all of it."

"What? Did his brother kill his mom or something?"

"Who can tell? Maybe. Maybe one of those things that Cassie was creating got out of hand. Maybe they both got sucked into whatever world the things came from. Whatever it was, they were gone and Cecil was here. Neither one of them was ever seen again, and Cecil couldn't talk, just stared straight ahead. He'd open his mouth and nothing would come out."

"God, how old was he?"

"Fifteen, almost sixteen. Tough age to go through that sort of thing. We tried for ages to get him to come out of it, to tell us what happened, or just to come back to us, but he couldn't. He'd gone away somewhere inside of himself, and we couldn't let him stay there. He was too important to us. The procedure was really the only option. The surgeons at General are good; they do a lot of them."

"Really?"

"There's a lot to forget in this town."

Carlos nodded. "Yeah, I guess I can see that. But why hasn't he ever told me any of this?"

"Oh, he doesn't know. The doctors tried a conservative approach at first, just cutting off this or that memory, but they just had to keep cutting and cutting, and when they were done, he didn't have a lot of memories that he could actually reach. He doesn't even remember having had the procedure."

"Oh, my poor baby." Carlos blushed, and put a hand up to his mouth, embarrassed by his own sentimentality. But Josie didn't seem to care. 

"It's actually not so bad. When he recovered, he was... different. He wasn't nervous, twitchy little Bunny any more. Somehow, through everything, he'd become The Voice. Leonard hung on at the station for a few more years, of course, long enough for Cecil to finish college and see a little bit of the world, but everyone knew it was just a matter of time before he stepped aside." 

She smiled lovingly at Cecil, who was beginning to stir and mumble. "And he's been Our Voice ever since. And on that note, I think I'm going to get moving. You should be the one he wakes up to, not wrinkly old me. That would probably scare him back unconscious." She carefully slid out from underneath Cecil's head, then tapped the angel on the shoulder. "Come on, Erika. We have a tuna noodle casserole waiting for us." She turned to Carlos. "We'll show ourselves out. When he's fully awake, I'd give him some peppermint tea. It's just the thing for an upset tummy."

Carlos hugged her and took her place on the sofa, tracing over Cecil's facial features with his fingertips, overwhelmed by sadness and love. Josie and the angel started toward the door, when she stopped and turned to him once again.

"Oh, and Carlos? I don't mean to tell you your business, but I'd be careful about pushing him on that memory thing any more. Some walls aren't meant to be destroyed, or even peeked over, you know?"

Carlos nodded. "Yeah. I know."

"See you around! Oh, and remind that scatterbrain that he said he'd come over and play pinochle on Sunday."

"Will do."

Josie and Erika left. Soon after, Cecil's eyelids fluttered open.

"Oof."

"How do you feel, Baby?"

"Oh, all right, I guess. I still feel a little queasy. Did you get all the data you needed?"

"Yeah, yeah... It was, uh, like you said, nothing to worry about. Everything's fine."

Cecil smiled faintly. "Oh, good. Hey, I remembered something for you. I had a dog, a dog named Skippy." He furrowed his brow. "I don't know what happened to him, though. Do you want me to try to remember?"

"No! No, that's okay." Not only did Carlos not want to have to go through the whole ordeal again, but based on what Josie had said, he was pretty sure that Cecil really did _not_ want to know what had happened to his pet. "Shall I make you some peppermint tea?"

"Oh, that would be lovely. Old Woman Josie always says that it's the best thing for an upset stomach. I started getting these headaches when I was a teenager, for some reason, and that's what she always gave me."

Cecil didn't understand why Carlos held him so tight for so long, but he didn't complain about it, either.

*************  
So now Carlos is recklessly driving down the city streets of Night Vale, comforter and thermos full of tea on the seat next to him. He's just heard Cecil's show. What could have possessed him to listen to that cassette? He curses softly to himself and hopes that the walls are still standing.


End file.
